JONAS: Halloween
by Thor2000
Summary: From the author of Suite Life: Return to 613 comes the story of what happened the Halloween after the JONAS haunted firehouse episode. Story listed Misc. Tv Shows for now; there is no location for JONAS TV Series.
1. Chapter 1

It was a cold and rainy night. A bit colder and even wetter than any night they could remember. The streets of Teaneck were full of water, cars casting waves against the curbs and small rivers pouring along into gutters and ditches. The trees swayed and shuddered in the breeze. Neighborhood cats hid under parked cars to keep from getting wet, paper skeletons on doors suffered from the moisture, Styrofoam tombstones with jack o'lanterns containing flickering candles wavered from the breeze amidst damp leaves carried by the air and people trudged on surly and disgruntled by the cold weather. The weather was going to ruin the candy getting season that was known as Halloween. The cold autumn rain was going to ruin the spirits of many trick-or-treaters. However, it could not affect the spirits of the truly young at heart.

"I hit every single puddle on the way home!" Kevin was drenched head-to-toe as raindrops fell from his locks of hair. As Joe and Nick were rushing from the van to the front door to keep from getting wet, their brother had sloshed through the big puddle in the driveway to try and empty it, raked the leaves out of the way for the water to rush into the storm drain at the curb and then jumped into the creek in the ditch next to the house and let his feet vanish under the raging water trying to knock him down to his feet. He got to relive his childhood only a paltry nine minutes before his mother calling him forced him to get out of the rain and come into the house. Once inside, Joe looked Kevin up and down from the muddy feet to the drenched t-shirt.

"How was the ocean, Ahab?"

"You could have joined me." Kevin surrendered his wet jacket and clothes to his mother in the laundry room. "Remember when we were kids and we played pirates in the rain screaming at each other as if we were on a storm at sea. We'd call each other…"

"I remember what we called each other." Joe rolled his eyes. Once he was stripped to his t-shirt and underwear, Kevin was sent up to his room to put on dry clothes on his mother's orders. Nick meanwhile checked his laptop for a report on the weather. The forecast called for rain and cloudy for the next few days.

"This is going to be the worse Halloween ever." Nick shook his head disappointed. "We go weeks preparing and building the best haunted house in the basement, and we're not going to get anyone to see it."

"Oh, I don't think so." Their mother started the washing machine with Kevin's wet clothes in the dirty laundry. "Last year, it rained, and we got a few trick-or-treaters."

"Seven…" Nick remembered. "Seven kids, and I'm pretty sure one of them was the same little girl in three different costumes."

"Little girls are so scary." Joe thought back.

"I was once a little girl." Their mother commented.

"Thanks for backing me up, mom…" Joe acknowledged her.

"Anyway…" Raven-haired and attractive Sandra Lucas moved through the kitchen of their renovated former firehouse. "Frankie is staying over with Mitchell because of the rain, and I'm sure you boys can find something to do besides living through another horror movie." She looked to Nick and recalled his alter ego as the alleged ghost of Volunteer Fireman Smith haunting their firehouse. The ghost was supposedly real, but Nick had perpetuated it with Joe's help to scare Kevin as a practical joke a month or two ago. "Your father is taking me out to dinner and see a movie. I'm not sure what happened to all the leftovers, but I'm sure you guys can order a pizza."

"No more pizza!" The boys were still reeling from the ordeal with the hot pizza girl.

"Chinese take-out?"

"Aw…" Joe grinned, put his hands together in prayer and spoke in a Chinese accent. "Chinese food take-out on Halloween sound very promising, mama-san."

Mother whacked her middle boy with the pillow from the sofa for being a smart-mouth.

"Hey…" Kevin came down his fire pole from his upstairs bedroom into the living room. He was cleaned and dressed in his jeans and a sweater. "Just got off the phone with Stella…" He climbed over the back of the sofa next to Joe. "She stopped by the party store and got more rubber spiders, snakes, rats and tombstones for our haunted house. This is going to be the best Halloween Haunted Basement ever!!"

The thunder cracked outside. Nick looked to his mother standing with her arms crossed to Joe and back to Kevin.

"It's raining." Nick reminded him.

"I know!" Kevin laughed as if he was in a horror movie. "What timing! We are going the scare the Shrek out of all those little kids! They'll be running out so fast we won't have to give them any candy. Wait…" He stopped and thought about it. "Do we have enough candy?"

As the sound of rain poured over the firehouse, Kevin and his brothers looked back to the kitchen counter and the five large salad bowls filled over the top with mountains of lollipops, bubble gum, soft mints, hard candy, toffee, licorice, tootsie rolls, miniature candy bars, packets of candy corn and chocolates wrapped in Halloween-themed foil. They had enough candy to open their own candy store.

"Mom…" Joe asked her to deal with Kevin.

"What?" She refused to get involved.

"It's raining." Nick interjected as he once again had to act older than his older brother. "No one goes trick-or-treating when it's raining."

"Don't say that! You'll jinx it!" He leaned down to Joe on the sofa looking for something to watch on TV. "I bet that little girl from last year is up to five costumes…."

Joe made a face as if he was scared….

"Kevin… Kevin…" Nick moved away from his laptop at the kitchen counter where he was sitting. "No one in his right mind is going to going house-to-house to get candy in this weather."

Thunder cracked again as the lights dimmed threatening to go out.

"I would." Kevin confessed.

Thunder cracked again.

"Well, you did say no one in his right mind…" Joe commented. Sandra knocked him with the pillow again.

"Kevin, honey…" She tried to say the thing the others hadn't said that. "I know how much you like Halloween, and how much effort you and your brothers put into setting up that haunted house in the basement, but maybe you shouldn't get so disappointed if just a few kids show up on account of the weather."

"But it's not that bad out…" Kevin remarked as thunder cracked and the power went out in the fire station. The air from the AC stopped blowing and all there was to see by was the soft bluish-gray light through the windows from outside. The lights started flickering back on and the AC started blowing again.

"You see… even Volunteer Fireman Smith is excited." Kevin had an excited boyish spark in his eyes. "This is his time of the year…." Kevin turned away speaking to the room. "But you behave yourself, Volunteer Fireman Smith. No body-stealing or hogging the candy."

Sandra looked around confused as Joe and Nick tiredly placed their fingers up to their noses as if they both had headaches.

"Guys, can you deal with this?" Sandra looked to Joe and Nick. "Your father will be here in a few minutes, and I still need to adjust my make-up." She headed for her bedroom on the second floor. "Oh, and if you get the chance tonight, replace the battery in the kitchen clock your father's been forgetting."

"Sure, mom…"

"Kevin…" Nick tiredly turned to his brother. "If I told you once, I've told you a hundred times, there's no such thing as ghosts." He thought he made his point clear. "And besides… you promised you'd never bring him up again…"

"I promised I'd never talk about him in front of you guys…" Kevin came round Nick to the kitchen counter to use Nick's laptop. "Instead, I've been talking about him on the Internet and discovered that a lot of the stuff in that book, "Ghosts, Ghouls And Cleanest Hot Dog Shacks in New Jersey" was totally made up." He punched up the website for the Collinsport Ghost Society on the East Coast. "These guys investigated the firehouse in 1993 while it was still empty, and yes, Volunteer Fireman Smith really did exist, but he never really claimed he was going to return and start putting out fires again." He grinned like a little kid over the top of his brother's laptop. "Guys, a lot of money goes into paranormal research every year. It's real. Just check out all these photos from all these other locations…" He showed their page of ghost photos.

"Car light, reflection, shadow, reflection, car light, leaf, water spot, dust, guy in a dress…" Nick shot down each of the alleged spirit photographs.

"Wow…" Joe popped on the link to a shapely female shadow from a haunted sanitarium on the West Coast. "Why couldn't she be haunting us?" He looked up to Kevin and Nick. "What?"


	2. Chapter 2

2

The rain had broke a bit about seven o'clock, and a few houses with kids broke free to get candy from the neighborhood in the brief reprieve, but the sky was still overcast and no one was sure if the drops they felt was from the sky or from something overhead. Thunder still cracked on the horizon as rain started rolling in, but in the temporary respite, kids ranging from eight to thirteen raced from house to house getting candy as fast as they could. They raced through soggy leaves, jumped over muddy flower gardens, around large puddles and through soggy lawns in their costumes in their conquest of candy from the neighborhood. Many of them had store-bought costumes with plastic pumpkin baskets while the creative kids with cheap parents threw together old clothes and became pirates, hobos and zombies. Everyone once in a while, a poor kid appeared wearing a coat or slicker over his costume. There were a few parents enjoying the holiday as well. One dad dressed as Batman carried around his one year-old-daughter as Spiderman. A thirty-eight year old single mother dressed up as Eighties Madonna showed up at the Lucas Family Halloween Haunted Basement with her seven-year-old daughter dressed as Christina Aguilera. Kevin met them at the exterioror descending stairs into the basement entrance dressed as Dracula in white face and classic Bela Lugosi costume. Stella was by his side in white face and a shredded mummy-like white dress as something between a ghost and undead Egyptian princess.

"I'm just saying…" She looked to Kevin. "It's really disturbing to see a seven-year-old Christina Aguilera with big boobs!"

"You know what I find disturbing…" Kevin waited as Nick playing Dr. Frankenstein sent out another group of kids out of the basement. "That Gwen Stefani had a twelve o'clock shadow and Adam's apple."

Coming out was Mrs. Gordon with her little girl, Haley, as a fairy princess. They had entered the basement past fans blowing streamers of black crepe paper to see a flicker strobe light of haunted faces staring at them, through a jungle of fake cobwebs as a spring-loaded ghoul stuck his face in and out of a fake wall. Through the whole basement, a running pulley system pulled ghosts along on wires as a CD of special effects played howls, screams, chants, groans and clanking chains. It was scary, but not rally scary. The only live act was Nick as the mad scientist fighting with Joe as his monster, but during their play-acting, Nick really did annoy Joe and they really did start fighting for a brief minute. Past that, Nick showed them through the fake coffin room and the stuffed zombie bodies twitching and shaking toward the candy and the curtain back out the entrance. Feeling a drop of rain, he looked up and hoped to get another visitor in before the rain.

"So, Haley…" Kevin grinned to the kid. "How'd you like the Haunted Basement?"

"What do Dracula and Frankenstein have to do with a haunted house?" The fairy princess asked.

"What does a fairy princess have to do with Halloween?" Kevin asked.

"Good point." Haley felt a raindrop as her chuckling mother tugged her away down the Lucas family's driveway.

"And another thing…" Kevin had one more point. "It's Dr. Frankenstein. The monster doesn't have a name!" He felt another drop from the sky and looked up as more drops came falling. A gang of kids coming up the driveway suddenly changed their minds as the sky opened up again, sending them scrambling for home. In the deluge, Kevin and Stella dashed down the steps into their own basement. Despite the forty-five minute reprieve from the rain, they actually had seventeen guests to the haunted basement. The driveway started filling with water from the street again, the trees started getting saturated and the wind picked up a bit. Dressed as a mad doctor, Nick arched his head up to the ceiling of the basement and listened to the rain. Several million tiny raindrops were pounding the fire station roof as if they were a tiny army of hammer-wielding elves. Joe could hear every tiny strike in unison and rose up from his slab in green face and flat head.

"It's raining again?"

"Apparently…" Stella shivered just a bit drenched in her white ghost mummy costume and crossed her arms before her chest. "I'm staying here. I'm not heading home in that downpour."

"We'll find something else to do." Nick locked the back door and lowered the security bar to deter prowlers.

"We got a lot of horror movies…" Joe was removing his monster head and padded sweater, but he still had a face of green make-up. "Why don't we fire up the popcorn maker, get some nachos…."

"We've seen all those movies almost a hundred times each…" Nick shook his head and turned up the stairs next to the back door for the living room with Stella and his brothers behind him. "There has to be a better choice."

"I've got an idea…" Kevin made a sinister face and changed the tone of his voice to someone more ghoulish. "How about…" He leaned down over the family dinner table with his fingertips to the surface. "A séance?" He arched his left eyebrow at them out of the theme he tried to create for them. Outside the house, thunder cracked.

Joe and Stella rolled their eyes away and Nick reacted with disbelief. He tossed away his lab coat and toy stethoscope. Joe used a wet-nap to clean the green stuff off his face.

"I'm just bored enough to say yes." Nick commented as Kevin jerked his arm back excitedly.

"I can't believe this." Stella wandered toward the kitchen. "I'm living a nightmare on Jonas Street."

Thunder cracked outside in the rainy night.

"If we're going to do this, let's at least do it upstairs with snacks…" Joe turned up his head toward Kevin. "What exactly is a séance anyway?"

"It's a ritual…" Kevin stormed up the stairs from the living room for the second floor and shot through the hall to the steps up to their room on the third floor. "… For contacting the dead… well, not the dead, but the spirits of the dead. You know, ghosts…. The dead don't talk… not even when they become zombies, and even then they pretty much just wander around moaning and groaning…" He hastened around the landing to the top of the fire poles over to his corner where he pulled off his vampire costume to his t-shirt and jeans and pulled up a box from near his bunk bed. From the box, he pulled out a large dark green wrap with letters, numbers and symbols stenciled upon it in a circle.

"Where did you get that?" Joe asked with Nick and Stella coming up behind him.

"I ordered it from Ghost House Catalog." Kevin laid it out on the table in the middle of the room. "They got much better stuff than that other place."

"I thought you took away his credit card." Stella asked.

"He must have found where we hid it." Nick mumbled as Kevin laid out the tarp and placed a small glass triangle on it over the table.

"Nick, turn off the lights…" Kevin took out the spaghetti-scented candle they had tried to give their mother as a gift the year before and lit it. "Now, in this game… Wow, it really does smell like spaghetti." He sniffed the candle as Nick turned the lights went off around them. "Now, the trick is… we all put on finger barely touching this glass triangle called a planchette and ask questions to the ghost of Volunteer Fireman William Smith, and if he decides to answer, it will slide to "yes" or "no" or spell out the answers… depending on what we ask."

"How long does this go?" Joe sat on the floor around the low table with Nick across from him. Stella sat between Nick and Joe with the brothers at cardinal points before her.

"The instructions say you can get a response anywhere from ten to twenty minutes."

"We go fifteen minutes then see what's on TV." Nick reacted skeptically.

"Oh, spirits of the underworld!!!" Kevin called out to the air over their heads. "Open the veils between this world and the next! We beseech you poor earthbound spirits who have passed on but not found everlasting peace to open your voices to us and answer our questions."

Thunder cracked outside.

"Was that a response?" Stella asked.

"No… fingers please…." Kevin ran the game as everyone placed a finger to the glass planchette. "Now, first question…. Volunteer Fireman William Smith, are you here?"

Nothing happened.

"Maybe the line is busy?" Nick asked.

"Maybe he's out getting candy…" Joe suggested and Stella grinned at his joke.

"Don't be ridiculous…" Kevin looked at his brother. "Ghosts don't eat candy; it's bad for their complexions." He cleared his throat. "Volunteer Fireman William Smith, are you still haunting the fire house?"

Nothing happened. Stella looked around the dark room and the shadows of tree waving outside the windows. Nick yawned a bit, and Joe blinked his eyes a bit bored.

"Let me ask something…" He decided to try. "Will our next single be a hit?"

The planchette under their four fingers slid a bit into a circle and stopped at the word, "YES."

"Well," Stella looked up. "They're always hits."

"Kevin, are you leaning on the table?" Joe looked to his brother.

"He can't be…" Nick knew his physics. "He slid toward him. It would not slide to yes if he was doing the leaning." He cleared his throat. "Will we always be a band?"

The planchette slid around YES and landed on "NO."

"Will we break up and later get back together?" Kevin asked.

YES

"Will Joe and I ever date?" Stella asked.

YES

"Will we end up together?" Joe asked.

NO

"Are we speaking to Volunteer Fireman Smith?"

YES

"Are you mad at us for living here?"

NO

"Will I end up with one of Joe's brothers?"

NO

"Will I ace my history exam?"

NO

"Is Miss Price at school really out to get me?"

NO

"Are there other ghosts here besides you, Volunteer Fireman Smith?" Kevin looked up. Stella and his brothers looked at him.

YES

"You've got to be pushing it." Nick looked to Kevin.

"I'm not!" Kevin was excited. "Come on, guys…" He cleared his breath, looked around the shadows around him and back to the board. "How many are with you, Volunteer Fireman Smith?"

The planchette landed on three.

"Three?" Stella looked scared.

"Yeah, three…" Kevin jumped up and ran over to Nick's desk and took his laptop to pull up the Collinsport Ghost Society website. "Guys, here's the page on the net about their research on the history on the place. Volunteer Fireman Smith really did die here, but he never made a vow to return. Their research showed that before the firehouse, the previous structure was an apartment house that housed Civil War veterans. Two of them died in a fire here, but before them, another more older farm house was once here…" He turned the monitor around to the others. "Look, according to legend, Sadie Winters once lived once on this site. Her husband accused her of witchcraft in 1786 because it was easier than to get a divorce. Before she was hung, Sadie swore she would return and have her revenge on all men by stealing their souls… or shoes, I can't make out that one word; the monitor cuts it off right there. I think the book merged all the stories about the ghosts with Volunteer Fireman Smith."

"Let's stop the game right now…" Joe started standing. "This is getting creepy."

"I'm with you." Stella was now reacting.

"No, no, no…" Kevin stopped him.

"Look," Nick reacted tired as well as skeptical. "I'm not saying I believe any of this stuff, but we're getting into some dark stuff here."

"You promised me fifteen minutes!" Kevin held them to their word. "That's barely been five. Now, I want to keep going… besides, the instructions say explicitly to not leave the game open without closing!"

"Can't you do that without us?" Nick asked.

"No," Kevin looked up from the floor. "We started the game with four members and we have to end as four. Come on… Besides, the room smells like spaghetti! I think Volunteer Fireman Smith likes it!"

Everyone started groaning and moaning and lowering back to the floor.

"We shouldn't have encouraged him." Joe groaned.

"I'm finding a new place to hide his credit card." Nick remarked as he took the same place on the floor and extended his finger to the planchette. "Just hurry up and wrap this thing, okay…" Nick apologized for the derogatory gesture and stared across to Joe shaking his head slowly annoyed. Rolling his eyes as if he was an annoyed little kid tired of orders, Kevin placed aside Nick's laptop.

"Okay…" Kevin was relaxing and loosening up. "Volunteer Fireman Smith, are you still on the line?"

The planchette slid to YES.

"Okay, are you here with the Civil War guys?"

YES

"Are they okay with us?"

YES

"All right…" Kevin looked up. "They like us. You see, ghosts get lonely too. They don't want to live here alone without people around them. In fact, on his site, Mr. Collins says most ghosts don't like scaring away the living. In fact, it's often the living who are prejudicial against ghosts…" He relaxed with a big grin. "Isn't that right, Volunteer Fireman Smith?"

YES

"What about Sadie?" Stella looked across to him hostile and spoke curtly and annoyed.

"No problem…" Kevin chuckled a bit. "I mean, come on… who's going to carry a grudge for over two hundred years? I'm sure she's forgiven her philandering cheating husband. Volunteer Fireman Smith, does Sadie have a problem with us?" He was grinning blissfully secure they were okay as the answers came from the sliding glass.

YES

"What?!" Nick reacted with alarm as everyone started getting scared.

"Yes, she's got a problem with us, or yes, she's okay with us?" Kevin was trying to clarify as the planchette started sliding and hitting letters on the table.

"D-A-N…" Nick was calling out the letters they uncontrollably hit with the sliding planchette.

"Kevin, cut the line!" Joe was yelling and Stella was screaming. "Cut the line!!!"

"Kevin Bartholomew Lucas at 1386 Jonas Street signing off…" Kevin screamed out hurriedly as everyone lifted their fingers and stopped the game in unison. "Whoa…" He wiped his brow. "That was close, eh, guys."

"Kevin." Stella stood up. "That word the glass planchette was spelling was "danger." Volunteer Fireman Smith was trying to warn us."

"Well, it's a good thing we finished, right…" Kevin looked at her and his brothers. He started giggling harmlessly.

"Stella," Nick stood logically folding his arms across his chest. "It was just a game with seemingly accurate but random answers to our questions. There's no such things as ghosts, and even if there was, what could they possibly do to us?"

There was a loud crash from downstairs, and everyone jumped from the sudden noise.

"By trashing the firehouse!" Joe responded first and rushed for his flagpole. Kevin and Stella shared a momentary look with Nick heading ahead of them downstairs. With Kevin down his pole, Stella reacted last to rush to the source of the noise, but she didn't want to be upstairs by herself. She wasn't scared in the least; after all, she was here so often she practically lived here, but rather than slide down a pole, she rushed toward the stairs and suddenly stopped and realized something. She could see her breath!

"It's cold up here." She stopped at the top of the stairs. She exhaled to the air and saw her breath, turning on the lights again as rain hit the roof over her head. The room was chillingly cold, enough to make her shiver. The boys' thermostat was at 72 degrees, but was it cold because of the weather or was there something more… supernatural at work? She reached to the vent and felt the warm air coming out then stood up and felt the cold air on the back of her neck. The little hairs on her skin were standing up as if she was being watched. Not allowing herself to b a weak female, she spun around and saw nothing. Covered in a pocket of cold air, she shivered and looked around trying to find the noise, even casually opening the boys' darkened recording booth and reaching out to find the source of the cold air. In the soundproof room, she turned round once to view her reflection in the glass…

…and that of invisible young blonde Sadie Winters in her colonial dress.

Surprised by the extra reflection, Stella screamed and dashed to run out of the recording booth, but something pulled her back. She had the sensation of arms around her waist, a hand on her lips and something heavy to her back pushing her down to the floor. She was pulled backwards by her legs on her stomach, her scream trapped in her throat, the sensation of energy building up in her body… It felt as if something was exploding inside her chest. She tried over and over to call out; a weak cough coming from her as her left arm came to life on it's own and hit the floor palm first, her right palm hitting the floor next. Her thoughts tried resisting the ideas entering her head, the new memories she was obtaining… She slid backward against the wall, her body lifting upward off her feet as she attempted fighting what was entering her. Her right hand reached the ceiling as she continued climbing up, her eyes a bright shade of blue as her head whipped her long blonde hair around. From her lips, she groaned, gasped and hissed both trying to keep what was happening and trying to crawl across the ceiling as if she was a huge human spider-like costumed superhero. Half way across, she spun round and hurled herself to the floor, landing on her feet, whipping her long blonde tresses back and pressing both hands to the glass windows.

She wasn't sure how long she had stood there. Was it a minute or an hour? Her bearing was different; her stance seemingly taller and prouder. Her face was stoic and determined. She leaned her head sideways, lifting her left shoulder up to meet her left ear and cracked the tense muscles in her neck. Relaxing a bit, a cold mist began pouring briefly from her lings and condensed on the glass. She turned her hands back and looked upon them with a light smile, looking down upon her body with an even more approving grimace to her beaming face.

"Time to start cleaning house." She told herself with a sinister giggle.


	3. Chapter 3

3

"So, Nick…" Kevin swept up the mess. "If there's no ghosts, how did mom's vase fall and break over here from across the room?"

"Vibration from the thunder..." Nick swept the floor. "It's a scientific fact that sonic vibrations over time can vibrate material objects. I bet it was from the last thunder-strike or even a big truck going by the firehouse."

"That was a pretty big truck." Joe swept up the loose soil from the plant.

"Okay…" Kevin stood with his arms folded. "But mom keeps her plant over here…" He pointed to the shelf under the stairs. "How did it land way…" He walked past the table toward the kitchen counter. "Over here?"

"It rolled."

"Before or after it shattered?" Kevin made a face daring his brother to answer that.

"Guys…" Joe stopped their debating. "Give it a rest, all right." He stood and checked the pieces, fitting them together like puzzle pieces, but if he was going to be tinkering, he wanted a snack. "Do you guys mind if I have the rest of the Chinese food?"

"No…" Nick looked over.

"Go for it, man…" Kevin signed off on the last of the take-out.

"Great!" Joe liked Chinese food when he could get it and turned to reheat it in the microwave. "I just have to nuke it a few minutes…" He pushed the moo goo gai pork into the microwave and closed the door on it. As he did, he caught a brief extra image in the reflective part of the door. It was only he and his brothers down stairs, but in the reflection he saw other people that should not be there. It looked like two pale skinny young men in ragged uniforms dragging old muskets by their sides. He whirled around in surprise and saw just his brothers.

"I just want the last egg roll." Nick came over and took what he wanted. He noticed Joe looking at him, his brother looking back and forth from the room to the microwave door. "Joe, your hair looks just fine."

"No, but, I saw…" He tried rationalizing what he'd seen and started mumbling under his breath.

"Guys…" Kevin picked up the TV listings and thumbed through it. "There's a movie tonight starring Hannah Montana as Joanie Justice, girl adventurer… I think it's called…" He looked up to the TV screen and saw the image of an older man in dark pants and suspenders with a thin white shirt standing behind him. It looked exactly like what he though their resident ghost looked like! "Volunteer Fireman Smith?" He reacted, spun around to see the smiling, benevolent spirit and instead found empty air.

"It's called Volunteer Fireman Smith?" Nick looked confused.

"No…" Kevin was waving his hands through the air trying to find the deceased fireman's ghost. "I saw Volunteer Fireman Smith! He was about so tall with white hair and a big grin like grandpa and looking over me. He's still here! He's trying to make contact!!"

"I saw the Civil War Guys!" Joe slid over. "I saw their images in the door of the microwave!"

"In the microwave?" Nick sounded skeptical and bounced his gaze from older brother to middle brother. "Guys, there's no such thing as ghosts. It's just the power of suggestion."

"Nick, wake up and smell the tombstones!!!" Kevin was getting excited. "They're still with us and trying to make contact! We have to find out why! Are they trying to tell us something? Do they have messages they want us to pass on? Are they trying to warn us about something?"

"Warn us?" Joe reacted. "About what?"

"Joe, honey, could you come up here?" Stella called down with her bubbly voice and effervescent personality from atop the firehouse poles to the brothers beneath her.

"Honey?" Joe reacted confused by that name she called him. Why was she calling him that? "Right now?"

"Right now!!!" Stella ordered him adamantly. His face contorting with confusion and perplexed silence, Joe looked to his brothers unsure what to do. Should they tell Stella about the ghosts? They didn't want to scare her.

"She is up there by herself, Joe." Kevin pointed out. "We can't leave her alone by herself with ghosts in the fire station."

"Will you guys listen to yourselves…" Nick looked to the two of them. "There is no such thing as ghosts. We are suddenly believing in things that literature and the movies want us to believe. There are rational, logical and scientific explanations for everything."

"Logical and scientific…" Kevin made a noise of disbelief along with a few faces of defying doubt and obsessed belief. "Did that séance reveal nothing to you? Sometimes strange things are going to happen and just who are you going to call?"

"Mr. Pizza's Speedy Delivery?" Joe grinned and pulled the Mr. Pizza ad off their refrigerator.

"No!" Kevin groaned upset and snatched the ad away. "Ghost hunters!"

"Joe!!!" From upstairs, Stella sounded angry. "Get that studly beefcake body up here, mister!!"

"Studly beefcake?" Kevin turned and arched his head up to Stella watching them through the floor around the poles over their heads. "Joe, are you two dating now?"

"No!" Joe denied his infatuation for Stella. "Let's find out what she wants…" He turned on his heel leading the way up the stairs to the third floor loft with his brothers. As they ascended the next set of stairs to reach Stella, they were all hit with a blast of cold air. By time they reached the top floor, they could see their breaths misting in the air. As Joe came around the last set of stairs and his eyes reached floor level, he noticed Stella turning to face him from the center of the room.

"Why is it so cold up here?" Kevin shivered and rubbed his hands together. "And why can't we get this sort of air in the middle of the summer!"

"Oh, you brought your brothers with you…" Stella looked up beaming with a big smile across her face to Joe. "I was… sort of expecting some… alone time." She flicked her hand away from her face and furled it into a loose fist she lowered and descended down by her side. Her eyes flared vibrantly excited, a bit eccentric and demented.

"Stella, are you okay?" Joe responded with concern to her. "Did you see something? Did anything happen?"

"Like what?"

"These guys think we're being haunted." Nick walked between Joe and Stella. "I'll get the heat turned back on." He turned to the thermostat and noticed the settings. The heat was turned on. He started struggling for answers.

"We are being haunted!!!" Kevin insisted as he pulled drawers open under his bed and checked his collection of gadgets and devices, pulling out a spectral thermal camera with an infrared screen for reading heat. "Guys, this change in temperature is known as a cold spot. Mr. Collins finds these in every haunted house he visits. They are caused by ghosts absorbing ambient energy out of the environment." He started scanning the room. "All I have to do is scan the room and find the source… Oh, the room looks so cool in this thing!" Through his card sized FLIR screen, the entire room was bathed in deep blue and dark violet without any visible heat sources in red, yellow or white.

"Joe, forget about them." Stella looked to the middle brother. "I'd really like to get you… alone." She had a wild look in her eyes as if she was hyped up on something.

"Why?" Joe backed away from her uncomfortable. "Stella, no offense, but you're acting a little… obsessed."

"Wait, Kevin…" Nick casually looked into Kevin's thermal camera. "Roll back…" He turned Kevin toward Joe and Stella to scan them.

"Obsessed?" Stella giggled secretly. Her heat signature on Kevin's device was unique. Instead of an orange and red aura around her profile like Joe, she was burning up a very bright white with a glowing light blue aura and the blue color of the room turning into violet being absorbed into her body. The camera was showing she was sucking the heat out of the room, but just how was such a thing possible? Nick and Kevin looked at each other and back at what they had discovered.

"Stella, look…" Joe grinned and tossed his hair back. "You are looking great in that mummy ghost costume. I mean… you're looking greater than great."

"Uh, Joe?" Kevin tried to get his attention.

"Just a minute…" Joe brushed off his brother. "I mean… You're looking hotter than hot tonight. You're practically glowing. I don't think I've ever seen you looking this hot!"

"Uh, Joe?" Nick tried getting his attention.

"Just a minute!!!" Joe yelled back. "Where was I? Oh, yeah… Stella, if anything, you look like a completely different person tonight. Your hair seems longer, your eyes seem bluer, you even seem a bit taller somehow… but we have to stay with our agreement that we can never be more than just friends. If we changed that, we could never go back to just being…"

"Joe!!!" Both Kevin and Nick yelled at their oblivious brother.

"What??!" He roared impatient at them.

"Stella is possessed!!!" Kevin realized the truth. "She's sucking all the energy out of this place and if she gets you alone, she's going to suck all the energy out of you!!!"

Joe looked back at Stella. Her blue eyes were brighter than blue all right; they were glowing like two tiny furnaces burning at full blast.

"You have got to be the thickest most ignorant self-centered male chauvinist pig I have ever met." Her voice was vibrating with another voice over-lapping her own. "You've got this beautiful young girl standing before you trying to kiss you and steal the soul right out of your body and all you want to do is talk! I wait two hundred years to be awakened from my grave to have my revenge and the first man I meet just happens to have principles? Why can't you just shut up once in a while and let me steal your soul!!!" She tried to grab him, but Joe ducked and scrambled across the floor after his brothers.

"Run away!!!" Kevin was screaming. "Run away!!!"

Stella jumped after Joe trying to get away from her but he scrambled up the steps to his fire pole trying to escape. The brothers scrambled and clung to the same pole, sliding down in one large human knot crashing down to the first floor. Over their heads, Stella hissed and tried to grab them but they got away from her. Down below, the boys reacted dazed and bruised after crashing into each other. They heard Stella storming down the stairs from the top floor, and dashed for the front entrance. Kevin tried jerking the door open to lead the way, but it never opened. It opened less than an inch, but something was holding it from the other side. He looked through the glass and noticed something that stopped them from leaving that way. The fire hose on the wall on the other side had been tied around the doorknob, keeping anyone from pulling the door open wide and escaping. Upstairs, they heard Stella coming patiently to claim their lives for herself.

"I hate this movie!" Joe jumped over the sofa trying to find a place to hide.


	4. Chapter 4

4

The rain pounded the neighborhood hard. The wind whistled through and around the trees and houses. Water flooded from downspouts and down driveways into storm drains creating rivers in the street with leaves trapped in the current like miniature boats in turbulent waters. Candles burning in pumpkins blew out. A few Halloween decorations blew away torn from houses and yards. Autumn leaves took to the sky as if they were chattering bats taking flight. A blanket torn off a fence ascended the sky in the form of a large dark goblin threatening the neighborhood. There was not a sign of life outside as people stayed sealed up in their houses out of this stormy weather. Most of the lights were on up and down the block as the Jonas Street residents spent their Halloween safely watching TV in their homes, but down the street in the former firehouse, things were not quite normal. Kevin, Joe and Nick Lucas of the band JONAS were huddled and packed tightly into the same closet off their kitchen.

"She's going to kill us." Kevin was pushed against the wall. "She's going to kill us."

"She's not going to kill us." Nick was still trying to rationalize things. "Stella wouldn't harm a fly."

"Stella wouldn't…" Joe looked between them. "But Sadie Winters hates all men. She's the one who's going to kill us. She's going to steal our souls and live forever."

"I saw this movie where this guy held on to his girlfriend, and she sucked him up into her chest!" Kevin was stressing out. "She left nothing of him behind! Nothing at all!"

"That was just a movie!" Nick pointed out.

"I know, but it's given me nightmares ever since." Kevin looked as if he was about to cry. "I'll never go see another Mila Kunis movie again!"

"Mila Kunis?" Joe looked to Kevin. "I saw that movie. I heard they're making a sequel with Ashley Tisdale and Demi Lovato!"

"Really?" Nick was interested. "Do they have a script? Are there parts for us?"

"Guys!" Kevin struggled in the crowded closet to stay on his feet. "We're not going to live long enough to make any movies. Stella is possessed and trying to kill us!!!" He heard the staircase out in the room creaking. Coming down in the firehouse inside Stella's body, Sadie Winters looked over the banister and scanned the room. The front door was ajar, but not open. The fire hose had kept them from opening it. They were trapped somewhere inside unless they had open a window and tore off the storm windows.

"Oh boys…" Stella placed her hand over the light switch and the power went out in the firehouse. Heat, electromagnetic energy, the ions from the lightning-charged air, the chemical reaction in batteries, even the electricity in this place, she was absorbing all of it and getting stronger and even more powerful. All she needed was the psychic energy from one or all three of those young virile male pop stars and she'd be unstoppable.

"Where are you, boys?" She came round the bottom of the banister and walked through the center of the room around the dinner table. "Oh come on, I'm not going to hurt you…" She looked under the table and stood erect again, taking a minute to crack the bones in her neck again with a creepy crack of her ligaments popping. "I'm just going to absorb your souls…." She noticed the door to the basement under the staircase, finished her route around the table and came back toward the door. Her fingers curled around the doorknob, twisted it and pulled it open.

"Here's…. Stella!!!" She jerked the door open.

Nothing. She leaned in and glanced down the stairs to the basement. Something told her they did not go back down there.

"Oh, Joe…" Closing the door again, she still had the backrooms to check out in the place. She slinked across the first floor peeling off the wraps from her arms. "I'm still wanting that kiss. I know you want it too. How about you, Kevin? Nick?" She treaded across the room placing her feet in a straight line, her senses gradually detecting every noise in the place.

"Come on guys…" Stella leaned backward and checked down the left hand side hall as she headed toward the kitchen to check behind the counter. "Don't make me play this out. Surrender yourselves to me. I know you want to. Don't make me have to wait till midnight."

"What happens at midnight?" In the closet, Joe looked to Kevin.

"It's like her deadline." Kevin looked to his brother. "At midnight, it's no longer Halloween; it will be November 1, and she'll be forced to return to her grave for another year."

"And take Stella with her?"

"I'm not sure."

"I think I saw this on an episode of the Monkees." Nick mumbled.

"Okay…" Joe checked his watch. "Midnight is in… oh god, an hour and forty-five minutes…." He took a deep breath to muster his courage. "I've got a plan. All we have to do is trap Stella in the closet until Halloween is over and Sadie is forced out of her body. Stella will return to normal, and we won't lose our souls."

"That's a great plan!"

Outside the closet, Stella stood leaned up against the wall listening to them. "Yes, that is a very good plan." She mumbled to herself.

"Okay, guys…" In the closet, Joe picked up and pulled on his old football helmet. "Kiss-proof gear."

"Kiss-proof gear!!!" Kevin and Nick pulled on their old helmets.

"Isn't it weird these things just happened to be in the closet?" Nick commented.

"Well," Kevin responded. "Mom has been after us to clean it out for months! Now… now let's kick some lady ghost butt."

"Do you have to say it like that?" Joe opened the door and started looking out toward the living room. The room was dark except for the old emergency lights and the illumination from outside. The storm still raged outside, but it didn't seem so bad. It seemed to be passing over. The basement door was hanging open.

"She's gone down to look for us in the basement." Joe told his brothers.

"Oh!" Kevin had an idea. "That big closet where mom stores her gardening supplies, we could trap her down in it then get out the back door!" He started closing the hall closet and found Stella patiently waiting behind the door with her head resting on her elbow. He looked close enough into her eyes to see her eyes burning bright blue.

"I was wondering when you guys were going to come out of there." She tossed back her hair and grabbed Kevin, pushing him against the wall and reaching up to lift off his helmet from his head. Joe and Nick spun around as she took his head in her hands, tilted her head slightly to kiss Kevin and leaned her head forward to his lips, but Joe pulled her backward and Nick re-opened the closet. The next thing Stella saw was herself getting pushed hard and fast into the closet amidst extra coats, old board games, spare umbrellas and forgotten board games and sports equipment. Kevin caught his breath as Joe reacted and pushed the bureau in the hall up and over in front of the door. It was full of old bric-a-brac and magazines, just possibly heavy enough to trap the blonde possessed seamstress.

"We got her!" Joe cheered and applauded his brothers with high-fives. "We got her!!!"

Stella's fist crashed through the door ahead of her arm, and Kevin screamed like a girl to see how strong she was. From inside the closet, Stella was hissing, growling and pounding at the door as she widened the hole she had made and gradually pushed the heavy bureau from the door.

"Oh my god…" Kevin watched too fascinated to look away. "She's just too powerful for us. I got it! We'll trap her in Nick's bed with the hatch placed over her and our amplifiers stacked on top!'

"You're putting what in whose bed?" Nick didn't like that idea.

"Guys…" Using incredible paranormal strength, Stella forced open the closet door and slid it and the heavy bureau to the side, casually striding up to the brothers smiling. "You know, I'm beginning to think you don't want me kissing you. If you guys don't stop this, you are really going to make me angry, and trust me, you do not want to make me angry." She grinned effervescently bobbing her head.

"Oh my god…" Kevin was freaking out again. "She's going to grow really big and eat us all like popcorn!!!"

"Back door!!!" Joe screamed and led the way down into the basement. His brothers right behind him, he didn't look back as Stella briefly hesitated and continued the chase.


	5. Chapter 5

5

"I'm going to kill those boys." It took Tom Lucas only about three minutes to untangle the fire hose from the front entrance to get inside the firehouse. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he was sure his boys had a good answer for tying up the front entrance way. Back at Mastersons, one of the best bistros in the Teaneck area, his wife sat with the check to their meal, but her husband in his absent-minded state had left his wallet behind after giving the boys the money for Chinese food. Sandra had enough cash for the movies, and they fully had intended to get the wallet before the restaurant, but with the rain, there were too many distractions going on. Upon untying the door from the outside and rolling the hose up, he casually jogged inside, noticed his wallet at the table and looked around the darkened firehouse.

"Guys?" He looked around curious. The place was dark and deserted like a crime scene on TV. "Kevin? Joe? Nick?" He called for his boys and looked around the darkened spooky room. From his left, he heard footsteps. Someone was in the basement and coming up the stairs. Pulling rope over her head from being tied to a chair, Stella emerged from the dark maw leading to the basement and stood surprised to meet the boys' father.

"Hey, Stella…" He looked at the boys' best friend in her tight form-fitting white dress. "I didn't know you were here. Where are the guys?"

"The guys?" Stella looked around and noticed the front entrance opened up for the guys to escape. She wondered if they could have gotten out, but it seemed as if their father had arrived too recently for them to get out that way. "Oh… uh, we're playing hide-and-go-seek. They keep hiding, and I just keep seeking them." She tilted her head sharp to her right shoulder, cracking the bones in her neck.

"Ehhhh, that's creepy." Tom looked at her partial shadow and cringed at the sound of her cracking her neck. "Aren't they a bit old for hide-and-seek?"

"Yes, yes, they are…" Stella crept on the boy's father, ready to pull him close to herself, but without even trying, Tom stepped out of her grasp as he checked the lights.

"Rain must have knocked the power out." He guessed. "Has Kevin or Nick checked the fuse box?" He looked back to Stella.

"What?" Stella quickly tried to act innocent. "Oh, uh, yeah, yeah… things should be okay soon." She looked sinister again, reposed her body and reached out to grab the forty-something band manager to absorb his life energies, but he moved at the last second and Stella went tumbling over the sofa.

"It looks like the boys got their Chinese food." Tom Lucas noticed the take-out boxes on the shadow of the dinner table. "Look, just tell the guys their mother and I will be home in a few minutes."

"No!" Stella popped up again and surprised him. "Wait!" She oozed methodically sinister to Tom. "I've got an idea. You and the wife just saw a nice movie and had a good dinner. The best thing you can do to top a night like this is a nice walk through the park and check out the stuff on sale in the shops. There is nothing like a long romantic walk after it has been raining…" Her eyes flared devilishly with secret motives to keep him from returning home too soon. "Take your time, I mean, don't worry about running home so soon…"

"Stella," Tom grinned at this young lady before him. "I didn't know you were such a romantic!"

"Yeah, well…" The young lady grinned a bit. "Maybe if my husband had stayed home instead of fooling around, he'd…." She quickly caught herself as Tom gave her an odd look. "I mean, if my future husband and I spent more time at home…"

"You know…" Tom waved his wallet a bit at her and stuck it in his back pocket. "I know Joe won't admit it, but I know he's got a soft spot for you. Someday, I think you could just might be a part of this family."

"Oh, Mr. Lucas…" Stella followed him to the door with her hand placed daintily to her chest. "That's so sweet. I've never felt so warm and welcome to anyone before like that." She stood at the entrance as the hurried father raced back to his wife at the restaurant. "I just want to let you know that I've never felt closer to this family." She suddenly slammed the outside door and raced back inside. "Enough of that crap…" She closed the inside door, grabbed the sofa by the back and the front and lifted it off the floor, tilting it up and barring the front entrance again.

"Okay, boys…" She cracked her neck again and looked to the top of the fire poles. "You're not getting out that way either. Here's where I get revenge for you guys tying me to that chair in the basement."

"She got rid of dad for at least another hour." Nick was watching from their third floor loft and turned back to his brothers. The room was still cold but not as cold as before. "How long until midnight?"

"Uhhh…" Joe checked his watch. "Twenty-three minutes…"

"I got a plan!!!" Kevin was typing at Nick's laptop. "I'm sending an emergency message to Mr. Collins in Maine. He's my hero. He knows everything about ghosts! He can save us…"

Almost four hundred miles away in Collinsport, Maine, horror writer and paranormal investigator William Collins sat up in bed tapping at his lap top to get his next novel complete. Tired after taking care of their two daughters, his wife, Ally, was wearing her Nick-and-Nora pajamas as she rubbed her face and neck with cream in her nightly ritual. During his typing, William saw a few e-mails pop up here and there. The last one was his sister at Collinwood asking for a favor, the one before that was from Cody Martin out on the S.S. Tipton out at sea sending his weekly diary.

"Turn off that laptop or else suffer from my wrath." Ally threatened him.

"Wrapping it up now…" Collins beamed to his wife being fierce. As he finished his paragraph and a few notes to remind him, a pop-up emerged from the corner of his screen reading "New Message from Kevin Lucas."

"I just got a message from one of the young men in my message boards." Collins told his wife as she slid into bed.

"You can talk to him in the morning." The adorable lady lawyer pressed the laptop closed and kissed her husband.

"Come on… come on…" Kevin was waiting for the return e-mail.

"Okay," Joe paced back and forth behind Kevin. "We seem to be doing very well dodging her and hiding in different rooms in the fire house. Let's just go back down the backstairs and hide in mom and dad's bathroom."

"Hey, wait a minute…" Kevin paused and looked at his brothers. "What's wrong with letting Stella kiss me? She's hot. I'm willing to sacrifice myself for you guys to escape. I mean… I'd only be losing my soul."

"Kevin…" Joe looked back at him with his hand on his shoulder. "You can't give up your soul to Stella. Without it, you'd be unable to love, to laugh, to react, to care… you'd become cold and logical…"

"Just like Spock on Star Trek…" Nick gave an example.

Kevin reflected as if he was thinking it over.

"That would be… so cool!!!"

"You can't play music without a soul." Nick pointed out.

"Curses! Foiled again!" Kevin reacted comedically then arched his head to a weird squeaking noise behind him. His head turned toward the fire poles as they noticed Stella's arm coming up out of the hole for Nick's pole. The three Lucas brothers turned round in unison to see Stella tightly hugging the fire pole, her legs twisted around it as she pulled herself up by the incredible tensile strength of her fingers clenching the pole, pulling herself up three feet at a time and then reaching to pull herself up another three feet.

"Hello, boys…" She grinned happily as she stepped on to the floor. "Miss me? Mommy's home!!!"

Kevin screamed like a girl again with his brothers. They turned and started for the back stairs, but Stella jumped and landed on Joe's shoulders, knocking him to his bed as she looked down on him and started kissing him just as Nick and Kevin pulled their brother out from between her legs. Hissing a bit, she launched off the bed and extended her long leg to the floor while snarling out of anger. She tried grabbing Kevin, but he dodged her under the foosball table under the windows. At that moment, Joe and Nick grabbed Stella by her arms and pulled her back to the entrance to their bathroom, but she was too strong for both of them. She grabbed them both, lifted them both up and slammed them both to the floor, jumping on to Nick as he rolled out of her way. Brushing her hair out of her eyes, Stella looked up as the guys made it back to the fire poles and slid down separately. Pounding the floor out of anger, Stella roared from the paranormal energies within her body and jumped after them down the poles.

"Break the window!" Kevin screamed.

"Right!" Joe grabbed a chair from the table.

"Dad would kill us!!!" Nick pointed out to them.

"Right!!!" Kevin noticed Stella falling and landing out of the loft without using the poles. "Run!!!!" They ran down the hall past the staircase and toward the game room in back of the firehouse, but Stella just turned round and looked back at the hall next to the kitchen. As she waited, the guys came running back to the front living room wielding pool cues and looking for her to come up behind them.

"I hate to do this to Stella…" Joe cinched his grip as if he was holding a baseball bat. "But she'd understand."

"When she comes out," Kevin tensed up and posed as if he was back in little league. "Lay her out." Stella tapped his shoulder.

"What is it, Nick?"

"Nothing."

"Did she get lost or something?" Joe wondered why Stella didn't come running from the hall.

"What is it, Nick?" Kevin felt the tapping at his shoulder

"Nothing!"

"Then why are you tapping my…" He noticed Nick in front of him and turned round as Stella dropped her arms around him, pulled him tight and pressed her lips to his for just the briefest second as her powerful arms pulled him tight. The guitar player felt himself getting weak as if he were getting weak and lost in an ocean of dreams, but Joe somehow forced the picture of their baby brother Frankie from the wall between their faces and pulled Kevin from her. Nick swung at Stella with the pool cue, but she caught it in her hand and snapped it in half with just her fingers tightening around it. Woozy and limp as his soul was briefly jerked from his heart, Kevin felt Joe pulling him into the kitchen. The three brothers piled behind the counter as Stella screamed with delight at the taste she just briefly relished. It was life… it tasted like ambrosia from the gods. It felt as if her body could be growing, exploding with delight… It was a taste she wanted back!

"Oh, yes…" She screamed excitedly as she turned to them. "I almost got one of you, and it felt good!" She braced on the counter rising her body up and down pulsing with excitement. Her white Halloween costume was starting to rip apart from all the activity she was going through. "Surrender Kevin… he was almost inside me! I know he wants to come back!!!"

"That kiss…" Kevin was all dreamy. "It was… wow!" He tried shaking off the effects.

"I'm sorry, Stella," Joe wielded the pool cue. "But if you go after my brothers again, I'm going to lay you out!!!" Stella just laughed knowing the three of them were no match for her.

"Okay, boys…" Her chest rising and dropping with her excited breath, she kept trapped them in the kitchen. "Either way you run, I'm going to get one of you guys going left or right. You see, I don't have to kiss you to steal your soul, I just need to grab and hold on to you for a few seconds, and then…." She started giggling malevolently.

"Stella, you can stop this any time." Nick looked at her from across the stove. "You see, I don't believe in ghosts. Whatever's going on, I know you're not possessed, and you know you're not possessed, and besides, by my watch, you only have a minute and a half left until midnight."

"Are you sure?" Stella started climbing over the counter as her eyes glowed brightly. "By the clock on the wall, I read an hour and a half until midnight. I could still get all three of you."

"Oh, wait…" Kevin checked his watch. "We forgot to replace the battery in the kitchen clock!"

"What?!!!" Stella roared.

"Eleven, ten, nine, eight…" Nick started counting down the minutes.

Stella started feeling weaker, her strength and power was decreasing as the power came on and lights snapped on. She started moaning on top of the counter, swaying a bit weak and tumbled off backward on to the floor.

"My watch must be fast." Nick shook his wrist to get his watch to work.

"Stella…" Joe stepped forward. He placed one hand on the counter and started looking over it. "Stella?"

Her hand reached up and caught the top of the counter just as Joe and his brothers screamed. The cute blonde ingénue reached up to brace herself on the counter and sorely pulled her aching body up on its edge. Whatever made her glow so vibrant with such extreme vitality was gone. Weak, tired and burned out, she looked across to the guys in fear of her.

"Guys…" She responded exhausted and opening and closing her dry thirsty mouth. "Next year invite Macey over for Halloween because I am not going through this again…"


	6. Chapter 6

6

Tom and Sandra Lucas arrived home thirty-seven minutes after midnight. They were feeling romantic and were in a good frame of mind after having the night for just themselves. However, in the morning as Sandra came down to start breakfast for her family, she noticed the large hole in the closet door and showed her husband who in turned roused the boys from their beds and Stella from the guest room. The damaged door was the only thing they could not clean up after the whole possession thing the night before. Herding the four teenagers to the table, Tom listened to their story and excuses.

"So guys…" Tom Lucas checked the damage to the closet door. "Let me get this straight. You guys had a séance, Stella became possessed by the ghost of an angry jilted witch and she broke down the door trying to get out and obtain your immortal souls?"

"Pretty much…" Nick spoke as their representative.

"Stella…" Sandra looked to the young lady. "Honey, what really happened?"

"I'm not a hundred percent sure myself." The young beauty was back to being her own person. "It just felt like a dream."

"Well, I bet that's what happened…" Tom tried to surmise a rational conclusion. "You guys just dreamed the whole thing, and Joe… you or one of the guys in a sleepwalking fit came down and busted through the door because the dream was so scary. Now, doesn't that sound possible?"

"That does sound logical." Nick nodded his head.

"But that's not what happened!" Kevin looked over to Nick and across to Joe and Stella. "Stella really was possessed last night! I remember her kissing me, and my spirit very briefly entering her body…" He swonned as if in love with Joe suddenly snapping his fingers annoyingly at him.

"Hey, hey, hey…" Joe stared him down then turned to their dad. "Look, dad, I have a lot of dreams about Stella, and this was no…."

"You have dreams about me?" Stella surprised him.

"Oh, no!" Joe started covering. "Not like that. I mean, I have dreams about school and concerts, and you're always there, but…"

"Look guys…" Tom pulled a chair out, placed his foot on it and braced on it as he talked to the boys. "If the door was busted by accident because you were sleepwalking, I can forgive you, but if you locked Stella in it on purpose and she busted out trying to escape, someone has to be punished for the damage."

"It was a dream!!!" The guys started insisting. "Just a dream, we were all sleepwalking!!!"

"Well, that explains everything…" Sandra finished the pancakes for Saturday morning breakfast. "Glad that's figured out, now, everyone dig in…" She carried out the pancakes and syrup as Tom brought out the scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. Kevin poured himself more juice from the pitcher already on the table, and Kevin went light on the bacon. Joe stole a look to Stella by his side, and she noticed it with a shy grin.

"So, what was it like being possessed?" Joe asked Stella in a whisper.

"Like being trapped in a horror movie I didn't want to star in, but…I…" She held her finger up as she recalled something else. "But I did like feeling really strong and powerful… it made me feel like Supergirl in the comic books."

"It's going to be a while before I read anything about ghosts…" Kevin pulled out his other book from his back pocket as Nick scanned the cover. The title read in white lettering on a dark blue cover, "Bigfoot Apes, Living Dinosaurs and the Best Hamburger Places in New Jersey."

"Oh, brother…" Nick rolled his eyes.

"Hey, did you guys know that their are lakes and rivers in our country with dinosaurs in them like Loch Ness?" He grinned fascinated by cryptozoology. "Oooo, there has been 278 sightings of Bigfoot in out state alone!"

"Hey, wait…" Joe suddenly remembered something. "When all that stuff started last night, I was heating up the last of the Chinese food." He slid out and headed to the microwave. "It couldn't have been a dream" Kevin and Nick made faces fearing punishment for the door and looked to their dad.

"There's no Chinese food in the microwave." His mother commented.

"But…" Joe reacted upset as he popped the door open, closed it and noticed the empty boxes in the trash. "We had a lot left over! Who ate it?"

"Maybe you guys did." Tom pointed out.

"We never got a chance." Nick realized then thought of his other brother. "Frankie!"

"He didn't come home from Mitchell's house." His mother sipped her coffee. "He stayed the night…"

"Well," Kevin looked around. "If we didn't eat all the Chinese food…"

"Who did?" Stella asked.

Invisible, inaudible and partially immaterial, Volunteer Fireman William Smith moved unseen through the firehouse to the sofa area and sat down in his spectral ectoplasm-generated clothing. Rubbing his round belly under his t-shirt, he looked over to Major Geoffrey Osment of the 38th Infantry from Trenton and Paterson native son Lt. Jamison Tisdale of the 18th Cavalry from out of Newark. When they were not in the firehouse, the grizzled old-timers from years gone by walked down to the theater where the ghosts of those chorus girls sang from backstage or over to the former pub where the ghost of that dead Prohibition mobster teased and mocked the patrons of the bar and grill now in the site.

"That was the best Chinese food I ever had." Tisdale spoke.

"That was the only Chinese food I ever had." Osment added. As ghosts, they didn't need to eat. In fact, the food just fell through them and ended up later turning into ectoplasm which they could use to become visible or move things, things the Lucas family never noticed or blamed on other things.

"We gotta watch over the boys a bit better than that." Smith sat tapping a pipe created from his spectral energy. "We played it a bit close."

"Where's Mrs. Winters now?" Tisdale asked.

"Back to her grave…" Smith puffed a bit from his pipe. "Cursing and swearing… I ain't ever heard a lady use those kind of words." At the breakfast table, Sandra suddenly turned her head up thinking she was hearing voices behind her at the sofa. She looked back, hesitated and cocked her head a bit looking around a bit sniffing the room.

"Boys," She looked upset. "I smell pipe smoke. Did you smoke something last night?"

Smith made a face and began stifling his pipe.

END


End file.
